Passion for Film Spurs New Festivals, but Grueling Work Keeps Them Going

Tom OMalley, left, and Luke Szczygielski in Lower Manhattan.Credit
Christian Hansen for The New York Times

Lunch hours were the first casualty of Tom O’Malley’s ambition. He sacrificed his afternoon breaks sometime last November as he pushed ahead with plans for the inaugural American Cinematic Experience Film Festival. His living room went next, overtaken by piles of paperwork and plastic tubs stuffed with DVD submissions for the event. Then his bank account took a hit.

Such is the price of starting a film festival in New York. While hundreds of new independent festivals commence every year around the United States — some as economic boons for their communities, others as the equivalent of art-house substitutes in small markets — New York is saturated, with niche events often carved inside other niches.

“We knew we were the new kid in town,” Mr. O’Malley, 23, said of his festival, which begins its first run tomorrow in Lower Manhattan. “We were expecting to take our beating in our first year and get respect as time went on.”

“But,” he added, “we’re confident enough in the festival that we think, ‘We’re going to show them.’ ”

If the American Cinematic Experience survives, the rewards for aspiring festival curators like Mr. O’Malley and his festival partner, Luke Szczygielski, will likely be years of debt and many more months of 18-hour days. But that doesn’t stop a procession of cinephiles, driven by a desire to cultivate the unknown.

“For us, we never wanted to be boosters just for the sake of boosterism,” said Prerana Reddy, curator of the New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival. “It’s about creating something unique. It’s almost an artwork in and of itself — a social sculpture, as it were, that you’re creating. An assemblage of people and ideas and media that are never going to be together again.”

Mr. O’Malley, a Web designer and an aspiring filmmaker, and Mr. Szczygielski, his film school colleague, conceived the event in part as a response to the ambivalence their own work faced in the festival establishment. New York, they decided, needed a home for modest American independents overlooked by mainstream monoliths like Tribeca and smaller festivals with more thematic or international interests. They envisioned a national, grass-roots call for entries confirming their event’s spunky appeal; they would round out the program with short videos solicited from YouTube and MySpace.

That was a year ago. Today, Mr. O’Malley estimates, the three-day, 28-film showcase will set them back $15,000. That’s after the donation of its setting, the Broad Street Ballroom (staff not included) for a generally slow August weekend, and after factoring in submission fees of $20 to $50 collected from about 200 entries. He had planned on at least three times that many. Tickets are $40 for a one-day pass, $100 for a three-day pass. (Information: acefest.com.)

For first-time organizers, reality can be dispiriting. The experience demands more than being a film buff, said Jon Fitzgerald, a consultant. “It starts with understanding your audience,” said Mr. Fitzgerald, a co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival who advises as many as 10 start-ups a year through his company, Right Angle Studios. “I’ve talked to a number of people who’ve decided they want to start a festival because they’re film aficionados. But it takes more than just a novel idea. I think you really have to be sure that you’ve got an audience to support the type of programming.”

Determining an audience is especially difficult in New York, a market teeming with options from the art house to the multiplex. Not to mention other festivals; an exact number is difficult to pinpoint, though there are more than 100. But the film marketing site Withoutabox.com functions as filmmakers’ entry point for 40 local fests, a 50 percent increase since 2002, according to David Straus, its chief executive. Their success depends as much on timing, geography and singularity as their programs. The Queens International Film Festival, for example, began as a nod to the borough’s diversity, featuring sidebars of foreign cinema and food and music from the films’ native cultures.

For low-budget filmmakers New York festivals allow them to get their passion projects in front of committed moviegoers, all at an average cost of $40 per submission. Genre directors once banished to larger fests’ midnight-movie ghettos have flourishing outlets like the NYC Horror Film Festival or the sexually themed CineKink. Foreign-language works reach viewers at Polish, Cuban, Korean, Brazilian and other specialized series.

“Film festivals have replaced the art house as distribution for independent filmmakers,” said Chris Gore, author of “The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide.” “If your movie can work in New York, that’s huge.”

Fledgling festivals must lure filmgoers with the prospect of important premieres and director appearances while promising filmmakers a sophisticated New York audience. The balance became too much for Josh Koury, who this year dissolved his own five-year old Brooklyn Underground Film Festival to concentrate on documentary making and programming at the Hamptons Film Festival.

“If I knew then what I know now, maybe I would have done things differently of course,” Mr. Koury said, noting the competitive conflict in mid-spring with the larger Brooklyn International Film Festival. “But I think that’s the beauty of film festivals like that. Real, underground, experimental cinema is an idea of do-it-yourself culture and having enough energy and gumption to just jump into something.”

But even the most publicized and best-financed festivals lose money. The Tribeca Film Festival, despite sponsors like American Express and $18 tickets, claims a $1 million operating deficit per year. Festival rookies meanwhile regularly underestimate the costs of insurance, rentals and travel. And the Queens International Film Festival, even with sponsors like Starbucks and JetBlue, and the growth from one location in 2003 to eight in 2006, requires the founder, Marie Castaldo, to cover many expenses out of her own pocket.

Those sobering facts do little to dampen Mr. O’Malley’s optimism about his festival’s chances. “We want to show people how dedicated we are to this event, and I think that comes through,” he said, adding, “People don’t even question we’re going to be around five years from now.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page E3 of the New York edition with the headline: Passion for Film Spurs New Festivals, but Grueling Work Keeps Them Going. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe